Moving home should be no big deal since this is a new server doing nothing.

Normally, I would just start over and do it all from install and not use lvm at all. I just wanted to give it a chance. From what I've read, it can be a good thing, although, some people have complained about it being too complex in a disaster....

Re: LVM help

You misunderstood me. You do have lvm2 installed on the server. However, shrinking root '/' can't be done while it's mounted. So you can't simply boot your server from the HDD.

To make it easier, you might as well use a ubuntu desktop cd (live cd) and boot it in live mode with Try Ubuntu. That way it's running from the cd and the HDD root is not mounted.

But the desktop cd doesn't have lvm2 included so you need to install it with that command so it can work with LVM partitions. That install in live mode is temporary, the next time you boot in live mode it won't be there.

Re: LVM help

I used the rescue cd it recommended: SystemRescueCD. It worked like a champ to resize my root volume, and had everything needed. It is now 15G instead of 396G. I can now go about creating new home volume.

I had downloaded and made a CD of PartedMagic, but it does not support LVM (yet).

Here are the commands to the best of my ability for resizing root, creating new partition for /home and moving old home to it, then deleting old home (from memory and putty logs):

[Boot to SystemRescueCD]

[Choose default boot]

"vgchange -a y"

"e2fsck -f /dev/<volume group>/<logical volume>"

"resize2fs /dev/polar/root 14G"

"lvreduce -L 15G /dev/<volume group>/<logical volume>" <-- I thought I might have wasted a GB here, but it doesn't appear so doing "df -h" now. This was before I learned about extents sizing

"resize2fs /dev/<volume group>/<logical volume>"

[Boot back to Ubuntu install]

"mkfs -t ext4 -m 1 -v /dev/<volume group>/<logical volume>"

"vgs -o +vg_free_count,vg_extent_count" <-- this outputs the number of free extents. Basically, it makes the size of the volume using this number _instead_ of bytes and/or, it utilizes _all_ the space available as measured by "extents"; or, it will tell you how many free extents you have if you try to make it too big; this is how I got mine and then issued the command to use them: "Insufficient free extents (99054) in volume group vg1: 99072 required"

"lvcreate -l99054 -n home vg1" <-- volume created "home" in volume group "vg1"; note: "home" here is the new volume that we will next format ext4; "vg1" here is the LVM volume group it will be created in

"rm -r /old_home <-- double-check everything; make sure you gotta good backup, then delete old home with this command

I think that's about it. I still have most of the putty sessions up and just copied/pasted from those. The SystemRescueCD commands I pulled from the guide above at shadypixel.com, "How to Shrink an LVM Volume Safely."